(a godson), a bastard son, or a son by affinity, is not established by the terms used. ANGLO-SCOTUS says that this king-unlike his father, who had many natural children-is not known to have had more than one; and, on the supposition of that son being first named or baptised John, he thinks that, following his father's example, he may have changed his name to Robert. There is no sure foundation, however, for such a view, the grantee of Auchengowan, Blackhall, and Ardegowan, never having been known called in any authentic writ by any name except John. The probability is, that Robert was a lawful son; for the charters are granted to Sir Murdoc Stewart, Knight, and his father Robert, designed Earl of Fife and Menteth, for their homage and service, and special support, to be extended in the first place to David, the king's first-born, to endure for the time of his life, and failing him by death, next to Robert. ANGLO-SCOTUS seems to interpret these charters amiss, when he says that the grant of one hundred merks to Sir Murdoc, and of two hundred to his father, fell to this son Robert on the death of David, his brother. That this was not the case appears sufficiently clear from a subsequent clause in both charters, by which it is stipulated that these money grants are to be held by the grantees and the heirs male of their bodies lawfully begotten, whom failing, they are to return to the king himself and his heirs. They were not provided-they came not-to Robert in any

event.

obert III. had, it is said, a son elder than David, who died young. His name was John, and he is said to have been mentioned in a charter to him by David II. in 1357 of the earldom of Athole, wherein he is described as the eldest son of Robert Stewart of Scotland, and the king's nephew, and of Arabella Drummond his spouse. (Abercromby's Martial Atchievements, Robert II.; Duncan Stewart's Hist., p. 61, note). Whether the use of the word "primogenito," applied to David in the two charters mentioned, must negative the correctness of this view, is a point which falls to be considered. The king's second son, David, is said to have been born in 1378. The third was John (another John then, the first being possibly dead), who died young; and the fourth, James, afterwards James I., who was for long confined a prisoner in England. The king, besides, had three lawful daughters. It is allowed, however, that none of the sons by Arabella Drummond, who lived, were born earlier than 1378. As to bastards, although ANGLO-SCOTUS knows only of one, Duncan Stewart mentions two-John of whom Blackhall is descended, and James designed of Kilbride, who is mentioned in the records of 1404, and also as making donations to the monks of Paisley. Of him, it is said, the Stewarts of Shawtoun are descended. George Crawford, in his History of

""

the Stewarts, also speaks of Sir John Stewart being one of the natural sons of King Robert III." (Robertson's edition, p. 58). It is Anderson, in his Royal Genealogies, who mentions John, the son younger than David, and who died young; and perhaps he was called by him John mistakingly for Robert. To a charter by Robert III. of Nov. 28, 1402, John Stewart, who is designed "de Auchengowan filio meo naturali," is a witness. Vide Nisbet (i., 206), who says that this charter was in his hands when writing.

ANGLO-SCOTUS' opinion seemingly is that entertained by us, that the devices on this tomb do not refer to the Princess Marjory Bruce, and that probably the female statue and canopy originally occupied a different position from that they now do, whether they represent the princess or not. Semple mentions (p. 292), that ten or twelve years before he wrote his addition to the History of Renfrewshire, which was in 1782, or immediately prior to that time, the Earl of Abercorn had the relics of the princess removed, and interred within his own burial-place in Saint Mirius' Aisle, and "covered with the foresaid monument," which, having regard to Dr. Boog's statement, could only be the statue. This shows the opinion then prevailing to have been that the princess had been interred somewhere else than in this aisle, and there is every probability that wherever that was, there the monument to her memory, if there was one, would be erected. The monument likely indicated the position of the relics. Unfortunate it is, however, that Semple does not state the place where the relics rested, and from which they were removed; but that, probably, was some part of the now entirely ruinous choir.

If the coat of arms on the centre shield is, as ANGLO-SCOTUS thinks, that of some ecclesiasticand of the soundness of this view there cannot be much doubt-who was this ecclesiastic? That is one query. Another is, how should the arms of Hamilton of Innerwick, and Stewart, Duke of Albany, or Stewart of Blackhall, appear on this monument? May they be accounted as having been great friends and supporters of the ecclesiastic whose memory the altar tomb was meant to commemorate? ESPEDARE.

WELLINGTON, WHO WAS HE?
(4th S. i. 293, &c.)

The anecdotes that you have already printed under this head induce me to send you two fragments of my own experience. The first of them strikes me as remarkably good. Your readers will lose half the point of the joke by not having known the man.

1. About fifteen years ago I was in the company of a rural vicar who had attained considerable

local fame on the strength of a heavy quarto on the topography of his own neighbourhood, and some half-dozen theological pamphlets. The conversation turned on some question of theology, and I quoted Coleridge as having maintained a similar opinion to that of my friend. With this he was extremely delighted, and after some minutes' thought exclaimed

"Yes! I must be right if he is on my side. No one like a professed joker for coming at the truth when he is serious. By the bye, did you ever see this book of his, it is the only one I ever heard of before? I never read anything that made me laugh so much in my life."

Saying this, the good man turned to his bookcase, and from among a quantity of small unbound books and pamphlets which were wedged between the third volume of the Folio Clarendon and the first volume of the Oxford Olivet Cicero that always perversely stood on the same shelf, he pulled out the younger George Colman's Broad Grins. It was quite evident that the divine had never heard of the author of Christabel.

2. The other day I arrived late in the evening at the head inn of a nameless provincial town. I was alone, and therefore preferred the society of the commercial room to the solitary dignity of a private apartment. There were several commercial travellers present. The conversation flowed briskly and pleasantly. I found all my companions to be men not only of good manners but also of considerable reading in the magazine and novel literature of the day.

course.

The ruins of a Cistercian abbey are very near the town; they became the subject of our disAfter praising their beauties, wondering how the old monks got their days over, and speculating about the height of the tower, and the value of the lead that had once covered the monastic buildings, one of the party remarked, "What a bad man Oliver Cromwell must have been to destroy this beautiful building!" I replied that Oliver had nothing to do with it. That, unlike Tynemouth, Crowland, and others, this church had not been turned into a fortress during the wars of the King and Parliament. The first speaker replied that I had misunderstood him. He did not mean that Oliver had done this as a soldier, but that he as supreme ruler had driven out the monks, and sold the lands of all the abbeys in England. I said I believed that the honour of that deed was due to Henry VIII., and suggested that he was confounding Thomas Cromwell, Earl of Essex, with the Protector. He, however, scouted the idea, and on an appeal to his fellow-travellers it was carried unanimously that it was a well-known fact that Oliver Cromwell was the man who destroyed all the abbeys in England; that I should find it so stated in any history of England. K. P. D. E.

LOW SIDE WINDOWS.

(4th S. i. 364, 488, &c.)

The theory mentioned by your correspondent W. G. is that of Mr. John J. Cole advanced in the Journal of the Archeological Institute for March, 1848. He considers that prior to the introduction of sanctus bell-cots, and commonly where these were not erected, then, at the low side window the sacristan stood, and in the elevation of the Host opened the shutter, and rang the sanctus bell, as directed in the ancient liturgy:

"In elevatione vero.ipsius corporis Domini pulsetur campana in uno latere, ut populares, quibus celebrationi missarum non vacat quotidie interesse, ubicunque fuerint, -Constit. Joh. Peckham, A.D. 1281. seu in agris seu in domibus, flectant genua.'

There is no example of a bell-cot-which was probably an innovation, though an elegant oneearlier than transition Norman, whereas there is a Saxon low side window at Caistor. Mr. Cole thinks that the examples at Prior Crawden's Chapel at Ely and La Sainte Chapelle in Paris were placed at a great height on account of the neighbourhood of monastic buildings, which would else have impeded the sound. As there were no casements made in the windows of a church, except this one kind, it is not easy to understand how, in the absence of a bell-cot or other means of ringing in the open air, the bell could be heard Perby people "seu in agris, seu in domibus." haps when neither low side window nor bell-cot existed the bell was rung from the porch, and that examples of hagioscopes, made from the chancel direct to the porch, were to comply with the injunction to ring "in uno latere."

In Mr. Nichols's volume of the Camden Society, Narratives of the Days of the Reformation, it is stated:

"The Papists too bwlde them an alter in olde Master Whytes house, John Craddock hys man being clarcke to ring the bell, and too help the prist too mass, untyll he was threatned that, yf he dyd use to putt hys hand outt of the wyndow to ring the bell, that a hand-goon should make hym to smartt, thatt he sholld nott pull in hys hand agayne with ease."

Does this refer to the sanctus bell?

Supposing that this theory respecting these windows be the correct one, why have we in any case more than one opening on one side? At Temple Balsall Hospital Chapel there were three shutters below the transom of a three-light window. At St. Mary, Merton, Surrey, Mr. Street says the low side window is on the south side of the chancel, the village being entirely to the north of the church, and there not being a trace of a house on the south side. I have myself noticed examples of this.

Personally I incline to the bell theory, but think with Mr. Street that the low side windows might have been used for more than one purpose.

The papers in Parker's Glossary of Architecture and the Archeological Journal (iv. 314) are chiefly valuable for the beautiful woodcuts with which they are illustrated. JOHN PIGGOT, JUN.

THE BONES OF VOLTAIRE:"HIS ESPRIT WAS BETTER THAN HIS CŒUR."

(4th S. i. 501.)

This he proved when he said, "Pour être heureux il faut avoir un bon estomac et un mauvais cœur.' Some two or three years ago I sent the late French Notes and Queries, L'Intermédiaire, copies of two letters I possess, which you may possibly think worth inserting in your valuable periodical. The one is an English epistle of Voltaire's to Lord Lyttelton; the other his lordship's answer (by far the better of the two), Dec. 1760:

66

I have read the ingenious dialogues of the dead. I find, page 134, that I am an exile, and guilty of some excesses in writing. I am oblig'd (and perhaps for the honour of my country) to say I am not an exile, because I have not committed the excesses the author of the dialogues imputes to me.

"No body rais'd his voice higher then mine in favour of the rights of humane-kind. Yet I have not exceeded even in that virtue. I am not settled in Swizzerland, as he believes. I live in my own lands in France. Retreat is becoming to old age, and more becoming in ones own

possessions. if I enjoy a little country-house near Geneva, my mannors and my castles are in Burgundy, and if my King has been pleas'd to confirm the privileges of my lands, which are free from all tributes, I am the more addicted to my King.

at my Castle of Fernex in burgundy."

"If I was an exile, I had not obtain'd from my court many a passeport for English noblemen. The service I rendered to them intitles me to the justice I expect from the noble author. As to relligion; I think, and I hope he thinks with me, that God is neither a presbiterian, nor a lutherian, nor of the low church, nor of the high church: but God is the father of all mankind, the father of the noble author and mine.

"I am with respect "his most humble Serv "Voltaire Gentleman of "the King's chamber.

Lord Lyttelton's answer: "SIR,-I have received the Honour of Your Letter dated from Your Castle of Fernex in Burgundy, by which I find I was guilty of an Error in calling Your Retirement an Exile. When another Edition shall be made of my Dialogues, either in English or French, I will take care that this Error shall be corrected, and I am very sorry I was not apprized of it sooner, that I might have corrected it in the first Edition of a French Translation them just publish'd under my Inspection in London. To do You Justice is a Duty I owe to Truth and myself; and You have a much better Title to it than from the

of

Passports You say You have procured for English Noblemen: You are entitled to it, Sir, by the high Sentiments of Respect I have for You, which are not paid to the Privileges You tell me Your King has confirm'd to Your Lands, but to the Noble Talents God has given You, and the Superior Rank You hold in the Republick of Letters.

The Favours done You by Your Sovereign are an Honour

to Him; but add little Lustre to the Name of Voltaire.

"I entirely agree with You, that God is the Father of all Mankind; and should think it Blasphemy to confine his Goodness to a Sect: nor do I believe that any of his Creatures are good in his Sight, if they do not extend their Benevolence to all his Creation. These Opinions I rejoice to see in Your Works, and shall be very happy to be convinced that the Liberty of Your Thoughts and Your Pen upon Subjects of Philosophy and Religion never exceeded the bounds of this generous Principle, which is authorised by Revelation as much as by Reason; or that you disapprove in Your hours of sober Reflexion any irregular Sallies of Fancy, which cannot be justified tho' they may be excused, by the Vivacity and Fire of a great Genius. "I have the honour to be

SKELP.

(4th S. i. 485.)

I am not sure that the original sense of skelp has been fully brought out. I think that it may be more fully explained, if considered as founded on the root of the English word shell. Now here the primary idea is that of peeling off a scale or flake, and it is marvellous how many words are hence derived more or less directly. Shell and scale are mere variations of spelling of a word signifying skin, husk, or rind. Shale can be split into laminæ, like slate, which is from the French esclat, a splinter or lamina. A scallop is equivalent to the Dutch skelp, a shell; and when we say scallop-shell, we do but repeat the same idea twice. Shale in old English means a husk; the shailes of hemp are the bits of stalk that have to be picked off from the fibre. In Danish, skille means to sever, and skilles to separate or part in a passive sense, as in the phrase melken skilles, the milk is turned; which compare with the provincial English to sheal milk, to curdle it. Hence the noun skill, discernment. Scall is used by Chaucer for scurf on the head, and a scald head is a scurfy head; still from the idea of peeling off. And we must surely refer scalp to the same root, as meaning the skin of the head. From the notion of separation comes that of dispersion, as exemplified by the Scotch skail, to divide or disperse; skail-water, the water that is parted off from the stream passing through the mill, and let off by a sluice. A shallow vessel for skimming milk, i. e. for peeling off the top of it, as it were, is called a skail in Lowland Scotch. A skull is the shell of the head; in Danish, skal is a shell, but hierneskal is the shell protecting the brains (hairns in Scotch), i. e. the skull. In Danish again, skaal is a drinking-cup or bowl, probably from its shell shape; a shell being a very primitive sort of cup. In Swedish, skål is a basin, bowl, or

cup; skålighet is concavity or hollowness, from the shape of a shell. Dricker ens skål is to drink one's health; see the last line but one of Longfellow's "Skeleton in armour." The Greek sculos is a hide, skin; skullo, I skin, I flay off; skuleno, I strip the spoils of an enemy. A shelf is probably so named from its being a piece of board slit or split off; in Scotch, a stone is said to skelve when it peels off on exposure to air; and skalve in Shetland means snow in broad flakes. Kilian tells us that the old Dutch skelffe means a shell; skelfferen, to split off; and skelffer, a splinter. In the same way, I take skelp to mean to skin, to flay, to flog so as to fetch the skin off. What better instance of this than the one which is given already in "N. & Q."? "But well may I skelp my weather's skin". e. I may surely hide my own wether's skin if I like. And just as to hide means to fetch off skin by castigation, and afterwards signifies to castigate generally, so with skelp. Hence Burns uses skelp to mean a slap, and skelping to mean slapping. When skelp signifies to hurry along, it is just what we mean when we talk about going at a slapping pace; this has reference to the oft-repeated beats of the feet upon the road, and is particularly applicable when the road is wet and splashy, as in " "Tam skelpit on thro' dub and mire." Hence skelp also means a downpour of rain, with reference to the pattering sound it makes. But, as if to bring us back to our starting-point, we may note that skelp further means a splinter of wood, as in "He's run a skelp into his finger," and the verb skelp signifies to apply splints to a broken limb. The confusión seems to be due to the two ways in which skin can come off, viz. either by slow peeling or by rapid excoriation; though it ought not to be concealed that there is yet another way of explaining the various senses, viz. by gathering them round two different roots. We may regard skelp, to slap, beat, which is the Islandic (not Danish), skelfa, as distinct from the skelp which means a splinter, and which is evidently from the verb skelve, to split off, and connected with shell and scale. Other words connected with shell are very numerous. Thus a shive in Old English means a slice or bit pared off; it is also spelt sheave. To shiver is to split into fragments at a blow, to break in shivers. In the intransitive sense it is to shake violently, to quiver, tremble; and here we find the Danish skialve used in the very sense of to tremble or shiver. So in Swedish, skifer is a slate, skifra to tremble, skilja to divide. In Moso-Gothic, skalja is a tile, i. e. a shell regarded in the sense of a cover; and from the idea that a shell covers and protects, we have shieling, a cabin, and from the same root shield and shelter. In fact, the many variations from the same root can be explained as naturally arising from the various ways in which a simple object can be regarded.

A shell is a cover; but to shell is to take off the cover, to skin. Or one can use a shell as a drinking-cup, or we can transfer it to mean the shell or skull of the head, or the scale of a fish, or a tile for roofing, and so on. The difficulty is to know where to stop. To sculk, for instance, is to keep under cover, and I might instance as many words more. See Wedgwood, under the heads Sculk, Skull, Scale, Shell, Sheal, &c. WALTER W. SKEAT.

EALING GREAT SCHOOL.
(3rd S. xi. 105.)

Surely, as a friend to humanity, and as a princely contributor to the ends of science, the name of Felix Booth may well find place in the category of Ealing "men of mark." In Boothia Felix that munificent and liberal-minded gentleman has raised to his name a monument " perennius," and "N. & Q." cannot ignore him.

ære

Morrison, the son of the far-famed Chinese scholar Dr. Morrison, and himself probably the first Chinese scholar of the day, was at Ealing in my time. And is not Huxley, the geologist, one of the Ealing Huxleys?

You name Sir Henry Creswicke Rawlinson; and right worthy of note, as a distinguished Ealing alumnus, is this wondrous man, who, by dint of perseverance never-to-be-sufficientlyestimated, and of lofty determination, has unlocked the secrets of ages long gone by, and unfolded for perusal the mysterious scroll of Moses' primeval history. But surely his brother George, an eminent classical scholar and the translator of Herodotus, should not be omitted from the category of Ealing "meu of mark."

I have every reason to believe that the present Viceroy of India was at Ealing in my time. Age, place of birth, time of entry upon the stage of the world, all concur in assuring me that Lawrence, my contemporary, was either the present Viceroy or his brother Sir Henry Lawrence-whose untimely death, pending the siege of Lucknow, we all deplore.

Of the highly-gifted family of Selwyn, there were five members at Ealing in my day, viz. Dr. William Selwyn, Margaret Professor of Divinity, Cambridge; Dr. George Selwyn, Bishop of Lichfield; Thomas Selwyn, a very clever scholar, of whom I have lost sight; and two younger brothers.

The Denmans were there with me: Thomas, the present Lord Denman, and Joseph the admiral; also Colonel the Honourable Mr. BosvilleMacdonald, Aid-de-camp to the Duke of Cambridge during the Crimean struggle, and his late brother, Godfrey, Lord Macdonald.

20

Why not note also, that M. Isidore Brasseuraforetime an officer under the first Napoleon, and

of late years, French tutor to H. R. H. the Prince of Wales and the junior members of the Royal Family-was one of our French tutors at Ealing? The Brothers Mayhew have largely contributed to inform the public mind, and to give knowledge to "the million." Edward, one of these painstaking brothers, and a very clever draughtsman, was one of the Ealing alumni.

Mr. Gordon, accredited Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary, near the court of Wurtemberg, was, if I mistake not, at Ealing School in or about the year 1823-1824: during the period at which the Westmacotts and the Howards (sons of the Royal Academician),

were also there.

Your correspondent W. errs not in his computation of the number of pupils at one period frequenting Ealing Great School. As far as my memory serves me, I should say that at or about the period of the construction of the "New Buildings" (dormitories), and the opening of the new dining-hall, situated on the thither side of that noble fives' court (where we have seen goodly play), Dr. Nicholas had beneath his care upwards of three hundred youths. I have alluded to the fives' court. Probably there were few better players of that fine game in England than Mr. Francis Nicholas, Mr. Stradwick, Mr. Henry, and some of the senior pupils of the school. And few, if any, were the fives' courts in England which could surpass our court at Ealing.

The writer of these sparse and imperfect memoranda left Ealing School in the year 1825; and has spent nearly the whole of the intervening period in foreign and distant lands. Yet dear to him is the memory of his Ealing days-grateful to his spirit are many of the associations connected with Ealing School-soothing to his soul is the mind-glance, from time to time given, at many of those beloved companions who at that time constituted his world. And it was with a feeling of poignant regret that he heard lately, from a friend and former school-fellow, that the ploughshare had passed over Ealing halls-that the railway had invaded its cricket-ground; and that the one thing extant, to lead the mind back to the Ealing School of yore, was the bathingpond in yonder meadow. Eheu! eheu! "Sic transit gloria mundi.”

A "CAPTAIN" OF 1825. Buenos Ayres, April 24, 1868.

THE LATIN LANGUAGE: ITALIAN DIALECTS. (4th S. i. 535.)

I believe the fullest account of the primitive Latin language (the Etruscan) will be found in the work of Lanzi, Saggi sopra le Lingue Morte d'Italia, in two volumes. It is repeatedly quoted, and with high commendation, by one of the best

judges on such a subject, Payne Knight, in his Prolegomena in Homerum, § 97-136, and 173, and in FIAFH, FEPPO, and Arfo in the long § 152 on the Digamma.

I do not know the date of Lanzi's work, but it is later than 1778 [1789.] INDEX.

The Illyrii (including the Liburni, Siculi, and Veneti), the Iberi (which includes the Sicani), and the Celta (including the Umbri), at times unknown rolled slowly from the Danube and the Alps to occupy the west and south of Europe, anterior to the Grecian settlements from Arcadia, rather from Peloponnesus (the Pelasgi), or from Asia Minor (the Tyrrheni Etruscans) in the foot of Italy. In Homer's time Italy was a dark fable-land. 1. The language of the Illyrians shows their Thracian origin, who entered Italy fifteen centuries before Christ. The Liburnians were from Croatia; the Siculi from Dalmatia; the Heneti or Veneti from north of the Po (Herod. i. 196); the name means "inhabitants of the coast.' 2. The Iberians from the vicinity of Genoa. (Thucyd. vi. 2; Diodor. v. 6.) 3. The Celts or Gauls inhabited the north of Italy, but were preceded in their occupation of South Italy by the Illyrians and Iberians. The Roman writers designate the Celts, Ombri, Umbri, Ambrians. A valuable relic of the language of the South Umbrians we possess in the Eugubian Tables, partly Etruscan and partly ancient Latin. (Lanzi, iii. 657.) The best works on this subject are the Récherches of Fréret, Mem. Acad. Inscrip. Part xviii., Hist. p. 72; and Adelung, Mithridates, ii. 448, where (p. 467) he has given the titles of works to be consulted.

T. J. BUCKTON.

Wiltshire Road, S.W.